Heck, I haven't even installed the non-free firmware to make wireless
work in a couple of these notebooks.

Firmware runs on the external hardware, not the system, so system
stability shouldn't be an issue. I assume that here it's just the
principle of the thing.

Celejar

I'd characterize it as a combination of principle and curiosity. I
really want to see how well I can accomplish what I want to do and what
I need to do using only FOSS. I'm relatively new to GNU/Linux, but I've
had very few problems that were at all difficult to resolve. Come to
think of it, the only problems that were absolutely indomitable were
caused by the use of non-free software / drivers in my earlier forays
into the various distributions. I guess those experiences have
strengthened my resolve to stick with FOSS.

What makes the non-free firmware question particularly interesting is
that the alternative is often to hardcode the functionality into the
hardware. Now, if you had a board with completely closed HW, but that
presented an open, well documented interface for the driver, most
people would be very happy (although there are, of course, the open
hardware crusaders - more power to them!). So, now that they've simply
implemented some of that functionality in SW, in the form of firmware
which the driver installs on the card, but which has nothing to do with
your host machine, are you really any worse off?

Relevant Pages

Re: [PATCH] USB: mark USB drivers as being GPL only... SOMEWHERE (if it was illegal everywhere, the the hardware shouldn't ... So there's no point in keeping a driver closed *just* because else ... Think about this scenario: a closed source driver contains: ... interim solution and has been replaced by a proper firmware solution....(Linux-Kernel)

Re: Configuring QLogic QLA4010c on Debian on Sparc... You DO sound like a Hardware freak / geek and I mean that as a compliment, ... Also, given Debian SPARC has a driver module for that card, and it ...CLI config tool on your Debian install somewhere. ... To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ...(Debian-User)

Re: Configuring QLogic QLA4010c on Debian on Sparc... You DO sound like a Hardware freak / geek and I mean that as a compliment, ... Also, given Debian SPARC has a driver module for that card, and it ...CLI config tool on your Debian install somewhere. ... To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ...(Debian-User)

Re: Switching from ipw3945 to iwl3945 driver]... The ipw3945 driver requires closed-source components and has been ... The kernel developers, on the other ...unknown hardware address type 801. ... To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ...(Debian-User)